Social care reforms: Almost 2 million pensioners will be denied state help

Andrew Dilnot, the economist brought in by the Government to reform long-term
elderly care, has said he regrets ministers' decision to defy the central
recommendation of his review, as it emerged that almost 2 million pensioners
will be denied any state help with the cost of assistance in old age.

Based on current population figures, a £35,000 cap would benefit about 3.2 million over 65s, more than a third of pensioners.

However, the £75,000 cap will only benefit about 1.4 million people, 16 per cent of the age group.

The average single person requiring care has a house worth £160,000 and so will not benefit from the means-tested assistance.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Mr Dilnot said that ministers had been forced to increase the cap because the “the public finances are in a pretty tricky state”.

“We said it should be between £25,000 and £50,000 in 2011/11 prices,” Mr Dilnot said. “The cap that’s being proposed is £75,000 in 2017 prices – that’s the equivalent of £61,000 in our terms.

“So it is higher than we would have wanted - £11,000 higher than the top end of our range and I regret that.

“But I recognise that the public finances are in a pretty tricky state and it doesn’t seem to me that it is so different from what we wanted as to radically transform the basis of the system.”

He described the current system as a “complete disaster” and said the new measures would mean that “for the first time you don’t have to be terrified of the consequences of needing care”.

Mr Dilnot said that although his commission had looked at the idea of having a state-run national care service it “was not plausible”.

“We talk in report about the possibility of either the state taking the whole thing or the private sector taking the whole thing,” Mr Dilnot said. “Our view on the state taking the whole things was that it wasn’t plausible even if it were to be introduced at any one point.

“This is a service where everyone has to believe whatever is in place will last for 20, 30, 50 years.

“The experience from around the world is that even countries that have tried to go down this route have pulled away when times got hard, leaving people in the worst of all worlds, thinking they were going to get it for nothing and then it not being available.

“So we judged [that] partnership between the state and the individual was the best way forward.”

Claudia Wood, the deputy director of Demos, said: “For the Coalition to consider putting the cap at £75,000 is unambitious, miserly, and will do little to solve one of the most vital social problems facing our generation."

She said it would be "deeply unfair" for the cap to apply to individuals regardless of whether they were married. Under the plans, couples will face a double bill of up to £150,000 before the state steps in.

The National Pensioners Convention described the reforms as “about as credible as a Findus lasagne”.

Dot Gibson, the convention’s general-secretary, said: “Setting a lifetime cap on care costs of £75,000 will help just 10 per cent of those needing care.”

The Coalition is unlikely to secure cross-party agreement over the package.